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Captain America
'Captain America' Captain America has proven to be the most long lasting and recognizable of a whole host of patriotic superheroes created in the World War II era. He is unique in that he is one of the few pieces of popular culture that has been around for both World War II and the more recent War on Terror. The way his character has changed from the past to the present provides a unique example of what Americans have come to expect from their heroes over time. 'World War II' Steve Rogers was a lanky teenager that couldn't make the cut to get into the army in 1941. Rather than give up, he signed up for the military's experimental Super Soldier program. The program turned him into Captain America, the perfect soldier. He spent the next four years of his comic career on the frontlines battling stereotypes of Axis soldiers and leaders, only stopping just long enough to make sure readers knew to buy war bonds. He was exactly what American sensibilities of the 1940s wanted, a big, strong man that was overseas taking care of business. He had a teenage sidekick to help show that young men could pitch in to the war effort, and his female contemporaries like Wonder Woman were busy stateside doing the traditional crimefighting while he was away. His nemesis was the Red Skull, a Nazi leader with Communist overtones and just a splash of classic movie monster. Everything was easily categorized. We were fighting the good fight against the bad guys and we were winning. There was no public outcry that Wonder Woman wasn't beating up Nazis alongside Cap, and nobody cared that Germans and Asians were being drawn as monstrous racial stereotypes. 'Post 9/11' Captain America was put on ice after World War II, both in and out of story. A few years later, when Stan Lee took over Marvel comics, Cap was found in an iceberg, thawed out, and chosen to lead The Avengers. For the next 40 years or so, he managed to stay out of reality's political spectrum. His real return to duty occurred immediately after the attacks on the World Trade Center. He jumped into combat in a much different way this time around, though. Modern readers couldn't work through their grief just by seeing Cap run overseas and deck Osama Bin Laden. They would also resent a comic book hero trying to encourage them to support the government through anything like war bonds. They wanted a realistic character they could sympathize with rather than a stereotypical hero, so Cap took the streets of New York City to help out in the aftermath. He helped back up policemen and firefighters, and he kept skinheads from attacking innocent citizens with Middle Eastern ancestry. He was less an unrealistic hero than an image of the good man that everyone wanted to be. Whether or not humanity has matured or just become more sappy since the 1940s is up for debate, but the fact that it has changed is evident in the differing portrayals of Captain America.